Video assisted patient education improves compliance with follow up and depression scores in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Objectives: Patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) have to deal with a poor quality of life (QOL) and psychomorbidity resulting from an incurable illness. We aimed to study the effect of patient education on QOL, compliance, anxiety and depression in IBD.

Methods: Patients were prospectively enrolled over two years beginning July 2014 and divided into an interventional and usual care group. Both received the standard of care, but the former in addition received an 8 min session of video-assisted education. Compliance to drugs was defined as drug intake of > 80% of the prescribed dose, and adherence to scheduled follow up visits were also compared. Self-administered questionnaires namely Short IBD questionnaire (SIBDQ), Beck Anxiety and Depression Inventory (BAI, BDI-II), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were used to assess QOL, anxiety and depression respectively at baseline, 6 months and 1 year.

Results: Of the 91 patients enrolled, 84 [92.3%; male = 66 (78.57%)] completed the follow up. Significantly more patients were compliant to follow up visits in the intervention and usual care groups respectively at 6 months (88.4% versus 65.8% respectively; p < 0.01) and 1 year (72.1% versus 46.3% respectively; p < 0.01). The median (IQR) scores for HADS-Depression over 1 year were significantly better in the interventional group than usual care (p < 0.049). The differences in SIBDQ, BDI-II, BAI, HADS-Anxiety and compliance to drug therapy between the groups did not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion: Video assisted patient education improved compliance to follow up visits and depression scores in IBD. Further modifications in the educational video content and delivery might improve compliance to drug therapy, QOL and anxiety scores.